


The Marat Network

by tritonvert



Series: Necromancy Enforcement Agency [3]
Category: French Revolution RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tritonvert/pseuds/tritonvert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuing from Historical Disintegration.  What will become of our resurrected revolutionaries?  Tune in next week, same Marat time, same Marat channel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 4 pm

“Mmmablablah blah blah blah?”

He shifts his feet and tucks his elbows closer, in case they were causing problems for his neighbor, the woman who had come on at the last station.  She didn’t sound put out, but he didn’t catch whatever it was she _was_ saying.  “Ah…pardon me?”

“Oh, I wasblahblahblah Ohio.” 

“Ah…I’m sorry, I…English is not my language…”  After a few awkward apologies the woman gives up on him, much to Saint-Just’s relief.  He  wishes he had one of those little machines that plays music right into your ears: no one would try to make conversation.  Marat had spoken very sternly about minimizing contact while they traveled.  Quite right.  A foreigner will stick in anyone’s memory, and as soon as he speaks he’s a foreigner. 

This is going to be a very long trip.  The train goes incomprehensibly fast, but apparently it will take fifteen hours.  Only five have passed.  The distance is something like half again as far as from Paris to Marseilles.  And the country keeps on going after that, on and on and on.  How far?  He’d taken the book of maps and measured: from the tip of his fingernail to his knuckle, so many miles, over and over.  Like going from Lisbonne to Moscou, and then perhaps farther.  These are the voyages you take as a child: book-voyages, measured on a map with your fingers, riding imaginary horses.

He misses horses.  Are all these machines better?  Perhaps: their construction employs workers.  (What are their wages?)  And their use doesn’t brutalize a man the way some men are brutalized by power over a beast.  He knows that he has, on occasion, driven by necessity, ridden a horse too hard, demanded that a team work uphill in sleety rain.  Necessity, and sometimes simply that thrill of power that comes into a man’s heart.  Is that good for a man?  And then think of the countless drudging animals pulling carts, donkeys with matted hair and sores and fly-crusted eyes.  Is that good for a man, to become indifferent to such sights? And yet, isn’t that worry on his part a distraction from the suffering of the man or woman driving the cart?

Saint-Just files the thought away, machines vs. horses, their respective social merits, to discuss later with Robespierre—and then winces.  Robespierre had declined his invitation to join in this escape.  Declined his invitation—declined Marat’s invitation, Desmoulins’ invitation.  Last night (no, early this morning) he had tried once more, slipping cat-footed into Robespierre’s room.  _I’ll pack your bag_ , he’d offered, _it will take two minutes, you don’t need to attend to what Marat says once we’re gone, just come with me._   Robespierre had pressed his hand, which wasn’t at all what he wanted.  It’s difficult to argue in a whisper, but he’d tried. _Your life isn’t over, your work isn’t over._   Robespierre had simply pressed his hand again and asked him to send a letter if it was ever safely possible.

So, not filing a thought away to discuss later with Robespierre.  With Marat, once they re-establish contact?  With _Desmoulins?_   He snorts and rummages in the bag under his seat, careful not to elbow his neighbor.  He’s some four-fifths of the way through this novel, too much left unread for him to willingly leave it behind, too little left to last through this full fifteen-hour journey.  After a moment he fishes out a pencil as well.  It’s his book now, he can write in the margins if he wants to.

“Mwabablah blah student?”  Oh, hell.  He’s been cursed with a chatty fellow-traveler. 

—

Camille pulls the wristwatch out of his pocket and checks it again.  The bus (less comfortable than the inside of a diligence, more comfortable than the outside) seems to have arrived slightly before its expected time, but only slightly.  He’s supposed to be meeting someone.  Where is she?  He only has a name.  A name and an explanatory note in a stranger’s hand: can only house someone through mid-May.  The name and the note come from Marat’s mysterious network of acquaintances.  How does it work?  Marat knows Dr. H, who knows another doctor in England, who knows (oh, the headache) another Marat, who knows…everyone?  He’d sent out his forces with a sort of brutal cheer.  Camille first, a bus that had left before dawn.  Where was Marat going?  _You don’t need to know._ Where was Saint-Just going?  He indulges himself in an image of the road opening before Saint-Just’s bus or train, his _conveyance_ , and a crowd of Furies pulling him down.  The other passengers, too?  Hmm, well, no.  That wouldn’t do.  Perhaps one Fury would pop its serpent-writhing head into the bus and ask for him by name.  Would Saint-Just slide down in his seat behind an open newspaper and pretend not to hear?  The Fury would have to weave down the center of the bus (or is it a train?), bumping into other passengers, who would tug their luggage out of the way with suppressed noises of irritation—

“A gentleman from Guise?”  He completely misses the agreed-upon phrase the first time she says it, and startles when she clears her throat.  It’s a young woman, he supposes.  He doesn’t mind the new fashions as much as Danton—rather likes them, in fact—but still, when you see someone with hair cropped short almost à la Brutus, a broad-shouldered and sharp-cut grey coat, and boots that come almost up to the knee, there’s a moment of not-displeasing confusion.  She repeats the silly watchword again (did they really need all this secrecy?) looking doubtfully and self-consciously into his face, and they both grimace.  “Yes, that is me.”  She rattles away in English, apparently offering to take his bag and politely chivvying him along out of the bus station.  He realizes he’s clutching the bag to his chest and tries to laugh. 

Their communication difficulties don’t seem to trouble her.  She keeps chatting while she steers him to her carriage.  It’s strangely warm and muggy outside.  At first, after the chill of the bus, he welcomes it, but by the time they’re in the carriage he’s wilting.  The carriage is one of the little ones, and it smells like stale tobacco.  “Ablaba yada blah Camille Desmoulins, right?  Mmmabba blah blah Guise blah Picardie abble blab Captain Picard blah blah _anyway_ mmablablah ah Baltimore mmablah.”  After a while he stops trying to follow, but he’s grateful for the conversation nonetheless.  He rests his head against the window and she turns on the radio.  Unexpectedly, he recognizes the song, something Metz used to sing along to when he was washing dishes.  _—To avoid complications, she never kept the same address.  In conversation she spoke just like a baroness—_

There’s something feverish about the whole trip, but he knows perfectly well that he’s not ill.  He’s just very tired.

He’s more tired still when they reach the apartment, up four narrow flights of stairs.  This is all too familiar.  Up, and up, and up, as if to the sort of garret rooms a briefless lawyer can afford.  Except that the rooms are decorated in Eclectic-Shabby 2013 rather than Superannuated Saute-Ruisseau 1787, and there isn’t even the bilious consolation of envying the rich people on the first and second floors: the whole building seems to be dingy and poor.  His hostess begins to apologize when they get inside.  This time she speaks slowly enough for him to follow, and brings out a French-English dictionary.  This is her apartment, she says, but for now her parents are traveling and she can stay in their house while he’s here.  He is to treat it as his own home.  She’ll stop back tomorrow after her work-day.  There’s fresh milk in the refrigerator, and bread and cheese and olives and beer and a dry sherry and—well, he can go look, he should have whatever he likes.  The towels are clean, the shower works most days.  Does he smoke?  No? Okay, then, she won’t find the extra ash-tray.  Here’s the key.  Don’t let anyone in that isn’t her.  Good night, and welcome to Baltimore. 

—

Marat had left South Station last, out of the group of historical runaways, and has arrived at his destination first, having the shortest distance to travel.  So this is New York City—now.  He sweeps the vast station with an unimpressed gaze and shoulders his backpack.  He has two hours to kill before his contact can meet him at the café.  The Café Au bon pain. 

Two hours later, Marat has learned that there is nowhere in the upper levels to sit unless you go into one of eateries.  He has two hundred dollars in an inside pocket of his jacket, ten slips of greenish-yellow paper folded into a soft little lump, and he does not intend to use them on anything as frivolous as coffee.  His London counterpart says there can be more money for each of them once they reach their destinations, a little bit more.  Neither of the younger men had asked where it would come from, how much.  Marat wonders when they will. 

Anyone can see that in the last three years Camille Desmoulins has forgotten how to be poor; and Marat has no idea whether Saint-Just has ever practiced it at all. 


	2. 7 a.m.

“Okay, it’s afternoon in London.  He said he’d be available until two o’clock his time, for Skyping.  Skype, uh, Skype is a computer thing—it’s got both audio and visual.”  Marat’s host finishes drying the plates from their perfunctory breakfast.  “You’re up for it?  Okay.”  Audio and visual: sound and sight.  Marat has only been exchanging emails with his counterpart in London.  They’d traded questions back and forth to establish trust and identity, and that was strange enough.  So now it’s time to see himself.

He’d been aware that the other Marat was resurrected some ten or twelve years ago.  But even forewarned he finds himself astonished at the sight of his own future.  That’s his hair, yes, still thick and wiry but now liberally silvered.  That’s his face, with the crow’s-feet spreading further at the corners of his eyes.  The skin at his jaw, his throat, has begun to sag, though he’s otherwise spare to the point of angularity.  He wonders what the other man sees: had he let himself imagine an even younger face, wistful for youth?

Mr. Warren, after setting up the computer connection, has wandered off for a minute on the pretext of collecting a newspaper from the hallway.  Tact.  But his absence makes it harder to start talking.  Finally London Marat jumps into the silence: “Who left with you?”  From there it’s easy to begin his report: Camille had been marched to the waiting area for the bus, and Saint-Just left at a train platform.  No, he hasn’t spoken with either of them yet: Saint-Just would have reached his destination some time in the wee hours of the morning, and won’t call until later today.  Camille had, unexpectedly, followed instructions and left a message on Mr. Warren’s phone, breathless and stammering but safe.  So he decided to send Camille to Baltimore and Saint-Just to Ohio?  Really?  Doesn’t it seem—

“Camille writes better when he’s unhappy.  And he thinks better when he’s hungry.”  For a few disconcerting seconds Marat thinks he’s going to have to argue with himself, but then the man on the laptop screen nods.  Yes, understood.  But now there’s an unexpected voice of dissent, Mr. Warren, back with the newspaper: “Is that really a working long-term strategy?”  Marat in New York bristles at the familiarity until he realizes the man is talking to Marat in London.  “You’ve seen people burn out at this work before.”  “It doesn’t have to be long-term.  But a week or two without coddling will do him good.  And Marat is right—he _does_ think better when he’s hungry and discontented.”  “All right, all right.  I’m not going to argue with two of you at once.  And Saint-Just?”

-

Saint-Just, at that moment, is sound asleep.  He hadn’t expected to sleep so heavily: he’d dozed on and off in the train, and it’s a far less taxing form of travel than horseback or even coach.  But there you have it, he’d gotten into the station at something like two in the morning and gotten settled into a guest room at something like three, and now he’s planted in bed, wearing the same clothes, snoring gently with his face pressed against the mattress.  His boots and duffel-bag make an almost-neat pile on the floor.

-

And Camille, at that same moment, is neither hungry nor particularly unhappy, no matter what Marat may hope.  He’s drinking tea and reading a fantastical story-book.  

The night had been odd.  At one point the people on the other side of the wall had been making unmistakeable and unignorable noises, and then even later a carriage had been driving round and round the streets tinkling out off-key music, the same bars over and over.  And then a little after four—he’d squinted blearily at the little clock by the bed—some ungodly whistling and whooping had started up.  _Car alarm_ , said a voice in the back of his mind that he was surprised to associate with Mr. Metz. After all that, sleep had been impossible.  He’d stared at the ceiling for quite a while before deciding to explore.  “Treat the house as your own,” his hostess had said: well, that’s the usual polite fiction.  What does it mean?  The clutter of personal letters and picture-cards stuck magnetically on the refrigerator must surely be off-limits, but the crowded bookshelves are legitimate prey.  It would be an abuse of trust to peer too deeply into the closet, but the kitchen cabinets are open, yes?  Coffee, coffee… _no coffee?_ All right: tea, then, and a round bagel loaf from the freezer, heated up and buttered, and the most luridly-colored paper-bound book he can lay his hands on. 

So after all that he should be out of sorts, but he’s not.  For one thing, he’s pleased with the progress of his English reading: he’s fluent enough now to grasp that this really is a series of stories about monstrous ogres from other planets.  They all work for a grotesquely fat overlord ogre king and they’re all, separately, trying to kill him, unaware of their fellow-slaves’ parallel machinations.  It’s _almost_ edifying.  It’s also, in some obscure way, heartening.  There’s something so…so familiar, about sitting at a table picking at not-very-good bread and thinking “if this _absolute drivel_ can find a printer, surely someone will buy up _my_ talents.” 

-

“So these two make our operation work.”  London Marat has waved his flatmates into view.  “Tania and Beth.  They understand computers, they make it possible.  Nothing would happen without Tania and Beth, and Tania writes for us about immigration.  Tania’s brother, we’ll try to get him on Skype with you at some point, he’s the one who predicted the American election.  He writes for us sometimes.  It’s been a great boon.”  This is well and good, but Marat in New York is struck—almost unsettled—by the expression on his counterpart’s face when he introduces the young women.  He looks like a proud grandfather.  He looks _content_.  And he sounds successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, Nate Silver, I guess in this world you're a Londoner named Omar, who occasionally hangs out with Marat...


	3. 10 a.m.

“Well—it’s convenient, isn’t it?  That they should disappear before my arrival?”

“ _What?_ “ 

Down at the end of the table, Jonathan Metz bites down on a similar response.  For the last two days the Necromancy Enforcement Agency team has done nothing but scramble around in preparation for this meeting with their French liaison.  They’ve got a half-dozen folders: memos pertaining to the police search, lists of all trains and buses leaving from the major Boston transportation hubs, analysis of the escapees’ media access in the prior weeks… The last thing anyone had expected was for M. Duclos to pronounce the event “convenient.” 

He continues, smoothly: “I don’t mean any…comment…on your work, of course.  Not at all.  But convenient for them, if there were any…if they happened to in fact be impostors.”

-

“It was a great upset.  At least, that’s what some people said, but if you’d just been looking at the numbers—there were enough people following my blog for it to get national attention, even just as a novelty.  ‘The Man Who Knew the Windies Could Win.’  And then I thought, well, I love cricket, it’s a great pleasure for me, but all right, Tania’s always after me to look at politics.  People—some people like to say, after the American election, ‘oh, it’s just numbers, it’s simple math, how could we not see it ourselves?’  It’s not _simple_ math.  But it’s, it should be accessible.  I’ve started making the process more transparent on the blog.  And we’ve been going back and forth about whether I should go public with my identity, drop the pseudonym.  But it adds this personal element.  People start their questions with ‘As a Pakistani, do you…’ instead of just asking the question.  And then there are speaking engagements and I’m horribly shy.  But there would be an income.”

In New York, Marat rubs his chin.  It’s not news to him that he still has a mountain of learning to climb.  Pakistan, for instance: he’d never heard of it until the newspapers started coming to the Arlington house.  He knows just barely enough to realize he’s in no position to comment as to whether this pleasant and mathematical young man should invite personal questioning.  His London counterpart has assured him—and he’s assured Saint-Just and Camille—that this is not a problem: _It has its value.  What does a newcomer think?  You’re shocked by the world?  Good, it’s a shocking place.  Convey that.  People will yell at you and say you don’t know what you’re talking about.  They’ll say you have no right.  Well?  Jump into the world, hurl yourself into it until you do know what you’re talking about.  They’ll have to listen when you say I know, I see this with my own eyes_.”

Marat recognizes his own voice, coming through the computer, but sometimes he finds it impossible to guess what the man in London thinks about.

-

“Well—what about the others?  Robespierre and Danton?  Are you going to claim that they’re impostors too?”

“I did not say that any of them _are_ impostors.  But—alors, it is a possibility.  There have been incidents…”

“If this is just so that France can pass the bill onto the U.S.—”

“Let’s not talk about bills yet.  Of course I’ll interview the remaining two.  And if Marat, Saint-Just, and Desmoulins should be found while I’m in Boston…say in the next week…I will evaluate them.”

“Mm.  —Jonathan, I think we could all use some more coffee.  Can you start another pot?”

-

“Well, are you ready for your exams?  Do you feel up to convincing someone that you are yourself?”  Robespierre makes no answer, and Danton keeps pressing.  “That you are altogether uncorrupted?”

“ _You_ joke about corruption.”

“Yes, if it gets a word out of you.  Is the coffee all gone?”

-

“I think it’s only fair to ask that you…put all your cards on the table.  As it were.  We’ve laid out everything we know and we’d appreciate that kind of candor in return.  We’ve been working around the clock to find these men and the last thing we expected was to hear your department call their disappearance _convenient_.”

“It was not a statement of policy.”  
  
“Well, what was it?”

“These…individuals…can be problematic.  They are highly political figures.  I’m sure you have experienced this as well.  Perhaps your George Washington, your Thomas Jefferson…?”

“You already have a Danton, don’t you?”

“He works hard for his country.”

“And Robespierre?”

“Honestly?  There were death-threats.”  Duclos seems to sense the growing anxiety from Metz’s end of the table, because he continues with a sort of lugubrious pride.  “Yes, history—historiography—has been unkind to the Incorruptible.  The men of Thermidor did excellent work.  Did you know that a recent documentary—soi-disant—presented him as the butcher of the Vendée?  Of course they exaggerate, but really… There was a resurrection in 1989.  Now that gentleman resides somewhere in the north under an assumed name, very privately.  So, you see, it might be better that he remain…”

“There are citizenship questions.  As you realize.  If France doesn’t acknowledge them…”

-

“You must be a little overwhelmed.  We usually go out for brunch on Fridays—Piet doesn’t have any classes until the afternoon—but if you’d rather stay here we can.”  His host’s wife sets three cups of coffee down on the table without spilling, carefully unknotting her fingers from the handles, one of those acts of astonishing everyday dexterity.  “Do you take sugar?  Milk?  No?”  Saint-Just is aware of her anxious smile and tries to assemble a response to the meal question.  “I would be happy to, but would it be better that I…there is some secrecy…”

“Sure.  You’re staying here as Piet’s cousin, right?”

“Yes.  Ah…Léon Florelle.”  All these little shifts towards disguise embarrass everyone, he thinks: the whole room holds a self-conscious breath until the baby on Piet Vos’ knee makes a rude and frivolous noise.  Babies do have their social value.

“Right, well.  Léon is staying with us while he writes.  A novel?  A novel.  Do you want to see Marat’s stuff now?  The London Marat.  It’s part of a larger network of associated blogs and there's a wiki…he calls his little bit of it _Dead White Guy_.”

-

“I understood that all individuals resurrected on American soil were considered to…have the option of applying for citizenship.”

“Yes, but—”

“And Marat, for instance, isn’t even French.”

“He hasn’t expressed any interest in Switzerland.  And Switzerland hasn’t jumped in to claim him.”

“Well?  But it seems that citizenship is not a grave objection.  They can consider themselves American.”

“So France…”

“This is not the official voice, you understand, but—everyone might find it happier if most of them remained in America.  Danton has been the only case that one could call successful.”

“But it’s _your_ _history_ —”

“Jonathan…”  Metz holds up his hands: briefly, placatingly.  He’ll keep quiet.  Sorry.

“I’m sure Mr. Metz is familiar with the difficulties of integrating living men into history books.”

-

Camille’s host had left, sitting on the kitchen table, two blank notebooks and a coffee-mug bristling with pens and pencils.  The obvious conclusion is that he should write.

_My dearest…._ Oh, who should he write to today?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to France for making them a moustache-twirling villain. Much the same thing would be happening if the countries' positions were reversed. Disavow history or control it, whatcha gonna do?


	4. Interview 1: Danton, Duclos

“All right.  This is what I want.  A nice house—it doesn’t have to be big, but decent—out in the country.  Roomy enough for a family, if I find a wife, you know?  Roof in good order, cellar well-drained, chimney doesn’t smoke.  And money to live on.  Maybe you’ve been told I live in a big way.  It’s not so true.  But I want a family if I can have one, I like to drink my wine and have a proper dinner.  I’ll work for it.”

“It’s not a small thing to ask for, a country house.  Not these days.  But something in a village, perhaps.”

“Good.  I want this in writing, you know.”

“Well…”

“Not this second.  I understand that.  But I don’t want anything dodgy about the property ownership.  It’s mine.”

“I think it can be done.”

“Good.”  Danton stretches his legs, stares out the window over his shoulder for a bit.  It’s a nice day out there.  Warming up into spring.  The ground will be thawed out now, more or less.  Mud puddles on lanes, baby animals squealing and wobbling about in barns.  “One more thing.  Camille.”

“Desmoulins?”

“ _‘Desmoulins,’ he asks._   Of course Camille _Des-mou-lins_.  Listen, if he shows up—if you find him, or Metz’s people find him, or he wanders back again with his tail between his legs because he’s run out of money—if he shows up and he wants to come home to France, you’ll take him.”

“That’s more complicated.”

“Bullshit.”  His gaze wanders back to the round-headed bureaucrat.  “He can live with me, if it comes to that, though it’s not my first choice.”

“It depends on him, doesn’t it?”

“Not really.  He’s not hard to manage.”  Danton makes a gesture: something held in the palm, wrung ever so slightly.  “I let him put his neck out, didn’t I?  I thought that between me and Robespierre, he’d be fine.   And Lucile…”  He looks back to the window.  The view into the grubby little backyard here isn’t much.  “We had pretty young wives.  In the end, I owe him.  It’s what you do for your people.  If he wants a home, he should have one.”

“Mm.  Paid for by the government?”

“Paid for by the fucking government.”

“You have a high opinion of your worth.”

“Naturally.  And so do you.  You tell me you already have a Danton.  Resurrected in 1989?  So he’s, what, pushing sixty?  I doubt this is a face that improves with age.”

“There was a Desmoulins, too, from 1989.”

“The hell there was.  No one told me.”

“Let’s say he didn’t make anyone a good investment.”

“I’m not talking about investments.  I’m talking about debts.”

“Ehhh…”

“Fine, then—investments.  I can talk in France about our good patriots, or I can talk here about everything else.” 

“Blackmailing people who died more than two hundred years ago, is it?  Ancient history.  Not much of a threat.”

“Sure it is.  If no one gives a shit about history, why did we dig up all those Roman stories for our republic?  The evil of the day just wasn't sufficient, was it?  _You_ are the government, _you_ are the power, _you_ are the one who needs history’s blessing.  And _I_ need a living.”

He gets the answer he expects, and they drink on it, but he’s no longer looking at the man.  A house in a village.  Why not?  Run down to Paris now and then, make a speech, then take a bus or what-not back home.  A couple of kiddies running down the street, tugging at Papa’s pockets to see if he brought back any candy.  A nice motherly woman in the kitchen.  Hmm, no, he won’t be living with Camille if you put it like that—not running down to Paris every week to make speeches and leaving the nice motherly woman in the kitchen with a friend—but the offer has to be made.  He’ll work something out.

How can you say there’s no virtue in back-room dealing?


	5. Interview 2: Robespierre

“I could probably ask him to come back another day.”  Robespierre hides a tired smile.  “I don’t think that would help, Mr. Metz.  The essential difficulty remains.”

The essential difficulty: he cannot put his mind into motion.  It’s happened before.  Spells of illness, of exhaustion, of—some kind of spiritual immobility.  But in the past there was always some duty to perform.  Essays to write at school, family and clients to serve in Arras.  The revolution, the republic.  Now?  Well—he does get out of bed every day.  He soothes as many surrounding egos as possible.  Even the smallest ones, which seem to need soothing the most intensely when they need it at all.  Now, for instance, Mr. Metz has brought him a cup of chocolate and a sliver of poppy-seed cake, which he does not particularly want but he takes nonetheless.  The cake, he knows, had been laid on for M. Duclos and M. Duclos had breezed right by it to start his interview with Danton.

“Do you _want_ to go back?”  Oh, dear.  Metz is doing his best in French again.  “If you want to, I am sure one can—I am sure M. Duclos—”

“I think that I prefer not to take up the line of work offered by the government.”

“Um?”

“As I see it, they want a menagerie to show the power and the virtue of the government.  I am not familiar with this government or its virtues. —At one time, there was a vicious little drawing circulated.  The funeral procession of our lords and masters the Jacobins.  Danton was shown leading a dancing bear—or was the bear itself.  I was drawn as a harlequin.  Does this seem like a scene that needs to be given verisimilitude?”  Robespierre sips his chocolate.  He thinks he must have lost Metz somewhere around the word _drawing._   Just as well.  “On another subject.  Miss Robineau—Doctor Robineau?—has mentioned that she has an acquaintance at Harvard University who wants to interview me.”

“…I don’t doubt it.”

“I would not mind.  And I suppose I do want to write a history, and I recognize that doing so with academic approval is an advantage.  But the students who…called us to life.  Are they not from Harvard University?  Presumably students of history?  —Mm.  Would not their professors, then, be benefiting from their misdeeds, if I speak to them?”  This time he waits for Metz to catch up, studying his face.  A friend with an open heart and open features can be a great help to a man.  “There are other universities, but they have their politics as much as nations do.  That is one problem.  I see at least two others.”  He begins to detail his concerns—financial self-sufficiency, citizenship—but the entry of the other Agency people into the room interrupts him, and shortly afterward Duclos and Danton emerge from their private conference.  Everyone stands up; and Robespierre makes a decision.

Duclos nods to Robespierre.  Robespierre nods to Duclos.  “Well, M. Robespierre, I think I’m ready, if you’d care to join me?”

A pause.  “No, I’m not sure that will be necessary, in fact.”

A longer pause.  “I…excuse me?”

“I’m not sure that will be necessary.  Does this interview determine in any final way my status as a French citizen?  No?  And do you in fact entertain any doubts as to my identity?”

By now the silence in the room has taken on a faint electric charge. “Because I have complied with many tests here from these good people, I have given them blood, which I gather to be scientifically identifiable though I do not claim to understand the details, I have given interview upon interview and proof upon proof that I am _myself.”_ He can feel Metz about to say something well-intended and very likely based on poor comprehension of the language, and hurries ahead.  “—I take it that you are now convinced of my colleague Danton’s good faith, yes?  You seem quite well-pleased, quite confidential together now.  Well.  I am sure he can vouch for me.  You trust Danton?  Then I am sure that he trusts in me.”

As he’d allowed himself to hope, Danton laughs suddenly, even claps him on the shoulder in a gesture barely short of violence.  There are several witnesses, obviously.  M. Duclos no doubt feels embarrassed and resentful—but who would argue with Danton’s _Mais ça, c’est Robespierre?_

Robespierre bows, which frees him from Danton’s hand.  “Then, as I prefer to remain in America for some time, I do not see the need for a private interview.  If you will excuse me?”

He’s sitting on his bed, rubbing his face, when Metz comes upstairs several minutes later.  Metz has tea.  Predictable but not unwelcome.  Two cups?  Oh.  He supposes he doesn’t mind company.  After a while he sits up straight, locates a smile.  “These drawing-room farces are tiring.  But I think I gained my…very small point.  A space of time to stay in America and do…something.  Write, I suppose.  Without joining the menagerie straight away.  —Do you know how it is to give a speech?  First you have to go up to the tribune, ask for a turn.  There are two or three other men, some your friends and some your enemies, who all want to speak too.  Then you climb up.  You have the luxury of standing on your toes to look a little taller, did you think of that?  A great state secret.  You make it through half a sentence and already there are a dozen voices on the right shouting you down because you are you.  Your friends shout you up because you are you.  It takes far longer than it ought, to create the space you need to say words anyone will think about, and even then half of it gets lost because everyone is already planning his response.  Even your friends don’t always listen.” Robespierre is still unpleasantly aware of his heart racing, but it strikes him that he feels reasonably alive. 

He wonders how much of the conversation has gotten across to Metz.  Probably very little, he thinks: he hadn’t taken care to pick words that he knows Metz knows.  But the other man nods after a few seconds.  “So after you’ve said what you need to, written something, I guess, in peace and quiet…”

“Yes?”

“The point is to go back to France.”

“Oh, yes.”


	6. Solo, Camille

“You’re sure you don’t mind if I smoke?”  Camille Desmoulins shakes his head, and his hostess decides she’ll believe him.  It’s her dining room and her tobacco, after all.  (In fact, she notices him surreptitiously watching her light it while he sips his coffee.  Should she offer one?  But if he says yes, will she have to light it for him?  Maybe another time.  She can demonstrate the magic of the lighter, just like she’d demonstrated the magic of the Starbucks instant coffee packet.  He’d acted like a host of angels had flown into the room, singing WE BROUGHT YOUR CAFFEINE.)  “I’m sorry I didn’t get this to you last night, but I needed to do some tidying up, clear my embarrassing top-secret browsing history, you know how it is.  Wouldn’t want anyone to know I had Cute Overload bookmarked, right?  Doesn’t fit my image.  Anyway.  Here it is.  Voilà.  It’s a couple years old but it works fine, I only got myself a new one because I got given some birthday money to throw around.  I don’t know how well it’ll hold up if you stay up all night raiding on Warcraft or whatever the cool kids do these days but you’re here to write stuff for the blog, yeah?”

Camille nods, and almost immediately his hostess strikes her forehead with her palm. “Jesus, sorry.  I’m talking too fast.  Next time I’m doing that, just interrupt, yeah?  Just say ‘hey lady, not a native speaker, slow up’ or something.  Anyway.  The computer.  It’s all yours while you’re here.  It should work fine.  You…hm.  Do you need help getting set up?  Do you have an email address?”  She’s slowed down enough that she can tell he’s following.

“No address?  That’s fine.  I got all day today, thank god for the weekend.  We’ll get you set up, vieux-dot-cordelier-at-gmail-dot-com or something, get you talking to the mothership.  I mean to Marat.  I know that’s not ridiculously trippy for you, but it is for me.  Swear to God, the first time Professor Warren told me one of the guys on the blog was Jean-Paul Marat I felt like my life was getting a little too ridiculous.  Well, no, _at first_ I thought he was just yanking my chain.  And then I thought he was either crazy or hella gullible.  _Then_ I felt like my life was getting ridiculous.”  Yeah, she’s talking too much again.  She ashes her cigarette.  This whole thing is unbelievable, isn’t it?  Camille Desmoulins, Camille fuckin’ Desmoulins, sitting in her kitchen.  He’s not half as waifish as she’d imagined, startlingly ordinary when you notice that he hasn’t shaved yet this morning and has clearly gotten butter on one of his sleeves, but then you think about it and _that’s_ unbelievable.  It’s an act of real self-control not to take a million pictures and post them.  “—Let’s get you online, little dude.” 

-

He’s not sure what his hostess just called him, but whatever it was, it went along with sliding over the computer she had promised: a hand-me-down, but still good.  Camille touches it carefully.  It looks exactly like the one Metz uses, a flat silvery case with a bitten apple.  The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?  That’s probably a stretch but he keeps it in mind for some future article.  “C’est un Mac Book, n’est-ce pas?”  It doesn’t strike him as a particularly funny thing to say, but he doesn’t mind the girl’s startled laughter.  It’s reassuring. See, he’s just Camille being Camille.

She shows him how to turn it on, how to bring up the pictures, the fox thing that Metz had showed him.  Makes him click here, click there.  “You’ll need a name for this,” she says.  “Vieux Cordelier?  Lantern Attorney?  No?  Neither?  Okay.  I don’t know if you want to use your real name, though, it’s like…”  He can’t follow the rest of her explanation, but it seems to be less important than, say, naming a newspaper.  “We’ll get you another one later anyway,” she says.  So she starts him off with 12juillet1789@gmail.com, which would be a remarkably unattractive thing to see set in type on an in-octavo pamphlet, but of course that's no longer a consideration.  And then she walks him through sending a message to Marat in London.  “And _now_ ,” she says with evidently-deliberate-and-patient brightness, “let’s get you to the grocery store.”

-

Two hours later, very tired, Camille counts the cash remaining to him, laid out on the kitchen counter.  It goes very fast, doesn’t it?  And yet, what had they spent it on?  Bread, cheese, coffee, wine.  “Veggies, you need veggies, this isn’t college,” she’d said, and so there are peas frozen in a bag.  On the same principle, there are small carrots in a bag. (Why is college synonymous with an avoidance of vegetables?  Louis-le-Grand had been rich in turnips.)   “Can you cook chicken?  Rice?  Pasta?  …How are you on using the microwave?”  And so there are many many packets labeled Top Ramen, because apparently ramen is inexpensive, and because Metz had insisted that everyone learn how to cook _something._

He hates ramen. _  
_

-

Four hours after that, Camille finishes a bottle of wine and stares unhappily at the stack of ramen packets.  There’s still plenty of money left _really_ , isn’t there?  He could go out somewhere, just this once.  Just this once, not making a habit out of it?  (That was always the formula that led to a night at the Palais-Royal, but this time it will be different, because there is no Palais-Royal.  Impeccable logic, Desmoulins, he tells himself.)

So.  There is a café—a _bar_ —not too far away.  He remembers seeing it; his hostess had pointed it out as a former favorite of hers.  He thinks he can remember how to get there.  It’s all the same street.  What had his hostess said?  Turn left when you go out the door, that way takes you towards the harbor.  Turning right takes you into a neighborhood that isn’t very safe.  (She’d let him protest that he’d surely seen worse, and told him that he was probably right and he could do whatever he wanted but _she_ didn’t walk around there at night.)  Turn left, but Jesus-Christ-be-careful-crossing-MLK.  (MLK?  Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard.  That’s the big street, the really huge busy one, just…just be careful, really careful, people here are the _worst_ drivers.  She had sounded just like Metz, when she said it.  Why do people act like he can’t cross a street by himself?)

-

_my dear citizen marat_

_  
_He looks at the words in the little box.  It’s midnight or thereabouts, he’s not especially sober, and it feels terribly urgent that he write back.  Marat-in-London had replied already to his first email, a surprisingly welcome and welcoming note explaining that as soon as he feels ready to start writing he can begin to send submissions to the internet journal.  Blog.  He’d gone on, talking about money, payment for submissions, the need for Camille to sort out his citizenship status, information about “green cards” and the Necromancy Enforcement Agency: a great tangle of information that Camille doesn’t feel up to working apart just now. _His_ Marat had been vague on the subject.  Out of ignorance?  Out of a kind of cool experimentalism?  Because—unless he very much mistakes London-Marat’s meaning—he, Camille, is meant to be providing an eye-witness narrative of a young stranger struggling to support himself in a strange land, and the stranger the better.

  
_my dear citizen marat_

_you couldn’t have told me this sooner?_

No, no good. How do you erase, again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still shamelessly borrowing coldhope's apartment--but not coldhope herself.


	7. Three very brief interviews: Danton, Robespierre. Marat, Marat. Camille.

“You could have warned me.  Of that, whatever that was.”

“Did I need to?  It turned out well enough.”

“For you.  You made me look like a fool.” 

Robespierre shakes his head and carefully removes his glasses to polish them.  “No, I didn’t.  I didn’t make you look like a fool.  I made you look like a good sport who helps out his friends even when they aren’t his friends.  Speaking of which—what’s this about Camille?”

“What’s _what_ about Camille?  —Yes, I asked them to bring him to France if they find him and he’s inclined that way.  I do, in fact, help my friends.”

“Patronage.”

“Well?  People like good meals—oh.  Metz.  I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Uh.  Hi, guys, I was just going to ask if anyone was ready for supper.  I can come back later…?”

— **  
**

**me:**   good you are on line

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   almost always!

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** I’ve heard from Camille  & St-J, finally.  I’ll send an email to you three this afternoon. 

**me:** remember to explain about reply all.  how are they?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** Fair.  Camille is uneasy about money and the size of the city and a dozen obscure things.  

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** St-Just has been noticed by university girls.

**me:**   which is to say he’s uneasy also

**me:**   hold a moment, did saint-just actually mention university girls

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   I read between the lines.  I’ve heard from your Dr H via my Dr B. 

**me:** is she well?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   Yes, just fine.  There’s news.  The representative from France came.  D leaves with him in a few days.  R stays in Boston.

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   by choice

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**    Neither agency pressed the matter.

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   Apparently it’s not what one would call a high priority for France.  Or the local police, now.

**me:**   no.

**me:**   should we pursue our permanent residency, then?  no reason to delay?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   None that I see.  Of course, correct papers will make it easier to find employment, and the network can legally pay you.

**me:**   convenient.  but less illuminating than this question of survival as an immigrant without papers

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   I leave it to your judgment.

—

“That is what they cost?  Not bad…”  Six dollars, see, that isn’t so much, when you consider that he’d found some wine for much cheaper than at the other store.  He’s doing well with this budget.  “Oh, what kind?  Ehhh, those with the, the chameau—camelus, cameli—”

“Camels?  Sure.  And I gotta ask for ID, it’s store policy…” 

“ID?”  Camille and the boy behind the counter eye one another doubtfully.  “That is…is that, is that the _papers?_ I do not have with me…”

“…yeah, you know what, I’m not gonna…you’re over twenty-one.  Go on, it’s cool.  Have a good one.”


	8. 24 hours

“Well—okay, this is where I say goodbye.  Um.  It’s been—I had some stupid speech I was going to say, but it’s been an honor and a pleasure and—uh.  Write to me?  Or something.  I know I gave you my address.  Just let me know how things go, okay?”  They shake hands, and Danton doesn’t turn it into any kind of display of manly strength, which surprises Metz more than it should.  Then he pulls him into a brisk hug, a very French sort of hug, which also surprises Metz more than it should.  “Sorry you’re stuck with Robespierre,” says Danton, and then he shoulders his bag again and sets off with M. Duclos to pass through airport security. 

Metz decides he’s not going to hover around, watching until they’re out of sight, and then he does it anyway.  There’s a movie he watched with his parents when he was a kid, and he doesn’t remember a damned thing about it except for the name: _The Last Days of Chez Nous_.  His memory pipes up with the thought that it was Australian, which really doesn’t matter at all because it’s only the name that’s at all relevant here.  The last days of…chez la révolution française.  The NEA is talking about where to put Robespierre if the others don’t turn up soon; they’re talking about sending his weekday replacement back to Washington.  Or maybe not.  It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for the NEA, all in all.

Anyway, weekday replacement or no weekday replacement, Metz drives back to the Arlington house once Danton and Duclos are altogether out of sight.  He’d been invited to dinner.  By Robespierre, that is, not by Larry Trudeau the Weekday Replacement.  (Unfair, Jon, he says to himself, Larry’s a perfectly nice guy and as soon as Robespierre had voiced the offer Larry had repeated and reinforced it cheerfully.  Nothing wrong with Larry Trudeau…the Weekday Replacement.)

-

It’s too early in the spring for the night to hold onto any of the day’s warmth; when Robespierre follows him out to his car after dinner it’s clearly not for the sake of taking a little evening air.  They stand together for a few moments, shoulders hunched.  “Metz… Do you think… Was it a, a mistake not to go back?”  Oh, hell.  Robespierre _would_ ask the hard questions.  His uncertainty must show, because Robespierre almost immediately apologizes. 

-

Awake.  Awake, yes, right.  He’s awake.  Someone should answer that.  He should.  It’s his phone.  He’s awake.   410, what’s a 410 area code? “Hello?”

“Metz?  Are you there?”

“Yeah, who—Jesus Christ, is that you, Camille?”

“Eh…c’est pas Jesus-Christ, enfin.”

“C’est pas…oh, for fuck’s sake.  Okay.  Where are you?  You, you should just tell me, I can find out from the phone number anyway—”

“I am in Baltimore.”

“Bal—okay.  Okay, Baltimore.  Give me an address—no, wait, lemme get something to write with— _ow dammit fuck_ —”  He scribbles down the address, makes Camille spell out the name of the street to be sure, almost knocks his laptop off the desk while he’s trying to pull up Google Maps and double-check.  All things considered, Camille is awfully patient with him.  “Okay.  It’s, it’s like…six, seven hours.  I can…I need to borrow a car, but…look, just, just stay put, yeah?  Just stay put.”

-

Hour One: Reflections on the embarrassment of living with your parents at age 35 and borrowing their car to pick up a drunk friend.  Reflections on the inconvenience of no one knowing what the hell the plan is with the Arlington house.  Reflections on the relative merits of returning to your old apartment after the sub-letter moves out vs. finding a new place.  Reflections on the lack of pet-friendly housing.

Hour Two: Reflections on the lack of professionalism indicated by the decision to make a retrieval trip without contacting the Agency first.  Reflections on the potential dangers to a Historical in Baltimore: busy streets, drug dealers, lurid scenes out of The Wire.  Lurid memes out of The Wire. Or just the text-book Historical breakdown in the grocery store.

Hour Three: Reflections on the fact that you never did see the actual real last season of the Sopranos, but do you really need to?  Reflections on the apparent nastiness of the English-speaking histories of the French Revolution, and its implications for Robespierre’s potential relationship with Academia. 

Hour Four: The sun rises over Trenton.

Hour Five: Reflections on the difficulty of composing a suitable message to leave with your boss.  Reflections on the ethics of not reporting the Historical situation in said voice message.  Reflections on the ethics of murdering someone who was originally executed over two hundred years ago. 

Hour Six: Oh, _now_ you remember that there’s a stash of CDs in the car.

Hour Seven:  Further reflections on the ethics of murder.  Murdering previously-executed revolutionaries, murdering your fellow driver, murdering that one guy who seems to think it’s totally cool to just wander slowly across the street in the general vicinity of a crosswalk while texting.

-

Metz presses the buzzer for #4, then waits.   He steps back to peer up to the top of the building.  If it’s just one apartment per floor, #4 will have a good few stairs to go down before getting to the door.  Assuming the buzzer even works.  It doesn’t seem like a strong assumption to work from.  Should he call?  Maybe he should call.  He’d called before, from a rest stop somewhere outside of Philadelphia.  Camille hadn’t picked up.  The voicemail message had been in a woman’s voice; he hadn’t caught the name.  Is there any point in trying again? 

He has his phone out of his pocket when the door opens and a familiar long nose pokes out.

_Goddammit, asshole, I am gonna fucking wring your neck_ , thinks Metz, and then he’s waved into a narrow dark hallway and pulled into another hug.  This is officially the huggingest 24 hours he’s had since his last birthday.  It doesn’t make him any less pissed off.  Neither does the walk up to the fourth floor.  And neither does their conversation once they get to the grungy little apartment: “Is there coffee?  There’s coffee, right?”

“No more.”

“Tea?”

“Nnno.  If…if you have money, I will go and buy something.” 

Ffffffff.  Of course.  Metz wordlessly fishes his wallet out of his pocket, regretting the sacrifice of his last small bills to a vending machine at the Philly rest stop.  He passes over a twenty.  Really he ought to accompany Camille, keep an eye on him, but the thought of all those stairs again…. After Camille’s gone, he drops down onto the couch and scrubs his knuckles into his eyes for a while, until he realizes he’s sitting, uncomfortably, on a book and that there’s no _reason_ to sit, uncomfortably, on a book.  Even so, inertia keeps him there for another twenty or thirty seconds before he stirs to retrieve it. 

Oh.  Hey.  _Tales from Jabba’s Palace._ This brings back memories.  This is high school, this right here.  Do they have the one with the bounty hunters?  They _do_.  Whoever the hell Camille has found to shack up with—or whatever the hell is going on—Jonathan Metz salutes his taste in reading.  Her taste in reading? 

Whatever.  Jonathan Metz salutes her taste, and then falls asleep on her couch.

-

When he wakes up, there’s a much stronger smell of cigarettes in the room.  He rubs his eyes again, looks around.  Oh.  Since when does Camille smoke?  Presumably since he started perching cross-legged on strangers’ beds, pecking away two-fingered at a Macbook, his hair straggling out of its tie.  He doesn’t look at all like a man in a crisis.  On a still-groggy impulse Metz sneaks his phone out of his pocket and snaps a picture before sitting up.  “What time is it?”

“Oh.  Oh, Metz.  It is mid-day.  Twelve…twenty-three.  I let you sleep.”

“Yeah.  Thanks.  I guess.  Since when do you smoke?”

“…It is not dear, not _expensive_.  Only six dollars.  Who doesn’t have a vice?”

That is an evasive goddamn answer, but it was a pointless goddamn question, and Metz is too tired to sort out whatever is happening.  “Did you get coffee?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Right.”

He does a little snooping while the water heats up, justifying it through the whole general strangeness of the situation.  Why Baltimore?  Whose apartment is this?  What does he do if she comes back home right now and finds him in her kitchen?  Where are all the clean cups?  When did anyone last wash the dishes?  Metz scrubs out a mug with his finger and a little dishsoap and searches out a spoon.  By the time he finds milk (still fresh) and sugar (the crunchy brown kind, cool) the kettle is shrieking at him. 

When he shuffles back into the other room, Camille is still typing slowly, still with the stupid cigarette parked on his lip.  Nnnnope, not looking like a man in crisis.  Looking like a man who ran out of cash and coffee and drunk-dialed an out-of-state friend, sure.  Like a fragile Historical on the run from the NEA and panicked about modern living?  Not so much.   Metz blows on his coffee for a while and collects his thoughts. 

“So what are you writing?”

“E-mail.”

“To…?”

“Personne.  Un correspondant.”

“You’re coming back to Boston with me, you know.  You get that, right?”

“Yes, yes.”  He leans over the screen, squinting, before giving the touchpad a decisive tap.  “I know, back to Boston.  I think I like it more.”

_This whole I’m-so-unconventional routine is bullshit_ , Metz imagines himself saying.  _It doesn’t overwhelm me with the urge to take care of you.  You’re too old for it, Camille Desmoulins, and so am I.  And—_ “After I finish this coffee, I’m taking a shower, because I’m pretty gross.  And then you’re showing me where the laundromat is, because you’ve pretty clearly been wearing that shirt for a while.  And _then_ we’re going to talk about what the hell is going on, okay?”  

It must not sound as convincing as he thinks, because Camille just smiles and nods and very obviously starts another email.  “Oh, Metz.  The shower, it is…changeant, capricieux.  Do not hope for the hot water to rest.”

  
-

Four o’clock finds them looking at the Inner Harbor.  “I’m not paying to go to the aquarium,” Metz had said, and no one had talked him into it, so they’re just sitting and looking at the water and the tourists and the boats. 

“So what’s…happening, Camille.  What’s going on?  Where is everybody?”

“I am writing.  For a journal on line.  A blog.”

“You _were_ writing for a blog.”

“I _am._ ”

“We’re leaving for Boston first thing in the morning and you are not taking that lady’s computer with you.”

“No.  But I am writing.  For a journal on line.”

"I dunno, man. I don't think...."


	9. 6:45 a.m.

**me:** There you are

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   Yes, hello, good evening. **  
**

**me:** you’ve had camille’s e mail

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** yes

**me:** well?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   Well?  You pushed him too hard.

  
-

The alarm clock goes off.  Metz has been awake for some little time now, uncomfortable in various ways, wishing the day would start.  Now he closes his eyes and lets the alarm run three or four seconds longer than he needs to. 

Okay.  Okay, he’s up.  The alarm clock is—where—over there on that shelf, right, and here’s the snooze button because as far as he can tell Camille is awake enough to groan loudly, a few feet away, but not awake enough to get his ass out of bed.  Metz is going to get _his_ ass off the couch and over to the bathroom, picking past the empty bottles on the floor as he goes.  Too many of those.  Last night...  Meh. 

It’s a sort of miniature bathroom.  When you think about it, how _did_ they get the old metal claw-footed tub up here?  A crane?  Before windows were put in?  God, not up those stairs… When the alarm goes off again he considers shouting _Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey_ in the general direction of the bedroom-livingroom-whatever-room, but opts instead for allowing Camille to find the clock himself this time.  There are neither eggs nor bacon to fulfill the figure of speech anyway.  And jokes about _Get up, we’re storming the Bastille_ stopped being funny ages ago.  He starts coffee and looks for something edible.

Good.  Camille found the clock.

-

**me:** I pushed him too hard? he chose to come with us, now he’s chosen to leave.  in a revolution one doesn’t have the luxury of hand-holding

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** We’re not in a revolution now.

**me:** You aren't, that's clear enough.

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** Listen, let me think about this.  It’s not the end of the world, for God’s sake.  He can think just as well in Boston.

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** He can write anecdotes just as well in Boston.  

**me:** if they give him a computer or let him use the post

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   I’m sure he can talk someone into it.

**me:** And what if the agency men come looking for the rest of us?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:**   If they press for some form of custody, it will become a legal fight.  You know the value of a little public legal squabbling.

-

**Léon Florelle** < leon.florelle @ gmail.com>

to Marat, Marat

Is anyone really surprised at Desmoulins’ departure from our work?

Mr. Vos has obtained my access to the college libraries.  The people who work there are bemused by my ignorance but forgive it clothed in a heavy accent.  As you said, their collection on Asian history is extensive.  But I have been attending more to military questions: questions of the army as such, that is.  Please send me links to all your previous articles on the American military.  What are your thoughts on the concept of military-industrial complex?

Attached find an article for your review.  It’s nothing of great importance, just impressions of this place.  The French Revolution is very fashionable here in a way, a superficial way, because everyone has been watching pictures of Les miserables.  Three different young people have already invited me to a show.  I feel as though I were cooling my heels in Picardie again, striking the heads off ferns for lack of flesh-and-blood tyrants.  Would it not have been wiser to send me to Baltimore?

Fraternally,

L-F.

PS - When do I get an email address from the blog site?

-

**me:** i know that it’s easier to appreciate when you’re not the one in jail

**me:** and so do you

**me:** do i need to point that out?

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** no

**maratlondres @ gmail.com:** Look, I’m on the phone with our lawyer associate now.  I’ll write you back.


	10. 7 hours

**9:00**

Camille sits in his seat, fiddling with the belt, watching Metz out the window.  He has to make a phone call.  To his boss.  Camille remembers the boss, probably the first woman he’d met here: unapologetically grey hair, a similarly grey coat crumpled from working all night on the problem of five new-found revolutionaries.  He wonders if she’s giving Metz trouble about this excursion.  Probably she should have had papers to sign first.  Everyone seems to forget his term as a ministry secretary, but really he does understand the concept of paperwork. 

Metz returns to the car, looking nettled.  He’s clearly in a foul mood this morning, hungover and stiff-necked from sleeping on the couch, and had punished everyone further by insisting that the apartment be cleaned as thoroughly as possible while respecting the privacy of Camille’s hostess.  A distinct streak of self-flagellation.  Why?  Last night: _“This is the most weirdly manipulative lost weekend I’ve ever had, and it’s still only Thursday,” Metz had said; when he had asked for explanation, translation, Metz had groaned and told him “never mind.”  But the computer was there, filled with a hundred dictionaries.  “What are the letters, then?  M-a-n-i…?” “No. Look, no, we are not sitting around getting drunk and talking about our feelings.”_ Perhaps that is the sin for which the couch and the hangover and the housework are penance.  The church has things to say about self-imposed penance.  But then, neither of them is Catholic.

Quite abruptly, Camille Desmoulins misses the political world. 

**10:00**

It’s true that one doesn’t become so car-sick in the front seat.  But it isn’t an infallible method.  Camille folds up the newspaper—he had insisted on one—and closes his eyes, swallowing. 

“Here, I’ll put the window down a little.  And—try not reading.  That can make it worse.  I can’t read in the car at all.”  A pause.  “Do you want me to pull over?”  “No.  Thank you.” “I’ll put on the radio, maybe?  Find the local NPR station, get some news?”

He’s finding, these days, that he can understand more of the sentences he hears than not.  They listen to a pleasant-voiced young man explain the world. 

**11:00**

The pleasant-voiced young man and his litany of international despair had given way to crackling sounds and finally unintelligible fuzz.  “Do you mind if I put on some music,” asks Metz, and Camille shakes his head.  The sickness has moved off, but he still doesn’t feel like conversation.  A smoke, maybe. 

Metz’ hand comes out of nowhere and clamps firmly around the pack of cigarettes.  “Nope,” he’s saying.  “Nope-nope-nope.  Not in my mom’s car.”  “I _was_ going to ask.”  He separates their fingers and puts the pack away again in his coat pocket.  “You were not, before, such bad company.”  “Actually, I’m pretty sure you’ve _always_ complained about me.”  “What elegant conversation we are having.  Des personnalités.  If you were a woman I would consider the moon.”

“ _Wow_.  Great.  Never say that again, ever, to anyone, not even once.”  Metz turns on the music—something hectic, wailing—and stops it again as soon as the singer starts up.  “Sorry.  Sorry, Camille.  —Tell me about the journal?  The blog?”

“Well, but it is secret.”

“I know, right, but…”  It’s interesting watching someone manage profound irritation while carefully driving a car, Camille thinks.  Almost as good as a dinner party. “So don’t tell me anything secret.  What are you writing about?  The Revolution?”

“Amusing histories of my arrival in Baltimore.  My editor recommends it.”

“What do you want to write about?”

“The Revolution.  No.  I don’t know.  I don’t know, yet, what…what Liberty needs.  Marat says that people are still not free.  I suppose that he is correct—they are not happy, certainly.  They are not happy, nor kind.  In their government, it seems that the same evils…remain.”  That was the word he couldn’t think of last night.  Possibly.  He pinches the bridge of his nose.  “Ambition in the place of ambition, greed in the place of greed.  I do not understand whether owning arms, or marrying another man, or how doctors receive payment…how these questions must be addressed.  If I read an article that satisfies me, Marat tells me ‘oh, Camille, you are seduced by easy phrases;’ or he tells me yes, good, and now to read _this_.  I know clearly enough what is happy, for a people. —Oh, never mind, as you say.  I need to find my style as journalist again, that is all.” 

“I—I’m pretty sure you’ll be a _fantastic_ blogger.”

“Oh?  Is that a compliment?”

  
**12:00**

They eat sandwiches at Subway.

**1:00**

Camille wakes up from a vague dream.  About Bourg-la-Reine.  He dreams very often about that place, about Lucile and about Horace.  Not something he cares to mention.  He looks out the window for a long time; this part of the country is supremely uninteresting.  Early in the drive they had passed through some very pretty places, where the people grew apples or peaches or something like that.  Then there had been a hell of factories.  Now dullness.

Metz coughs.  “I, um.  I should tell you something.  Danton left for France yesterday.  No, the day before.”

He thinks carefully.  “You did not say so, not before we were on the road.”

“I know.”

“ _You_ called _me_ manipulative?”

“…I know.”

“What happened?”

“Someone came from France, from the government.  I guess he made a deal.  He wanted to go home.  Have a bunch of little French kiddies—”

_"You are not a father."_

**2:00**

Well, that was a long and uncomfortable silence.   Since Metz seems too stricken to break it, eventually Camille decides he ought to.  But then he can’t think of anything to say, and it just goes on.  Eventually they get off the vast highway again and pull up to a small store.  “I gotta pee,” says Metz, which is fascinating and delightful information, thank you, but at least it serves to move their voices into use again.  When he gets back and they take to the highway, they’re able to make small conversations. 

Finally he asks about Robespierre.  “He’s still here.  In Arlington, I mean.  He—I mean, you’d have to ask him.  But I think he didn’t want to go into the political circus.  He's taking a little time off?”  Metz eyes him sideways, plainly anxious.  “Listen, if you want to go back to France too, I think you can.  Danton made it clear he wanted them to welcome you, and I’m sure it could be done.  If you want.”

“Maybe I should.  —Oh, don’t look like that.  You would never miss me.” 

**3:00**

“So…what now?  We are near Arlington?”

“Yeah, getting there.  We’ll, uh.  We’ll get to the house, and I guess then I call my boss.”

“Will I have to make explanations?”

“Probably.  I mean…everyone wants to know where Marat and Saint-Just are.  There’s iffy legalities.  And I mean, _I’m_ worried.  —Yeah, yeah, you don’t know, you don’t have any idea where they could possibly be.  Right.  Tell it to my boss.”

He could ask Metz to let him keep writing.  Sneak him a computer now and then.  Take articles to the post.  He wonders what would happen.  “Metz…”

“Yeah?”

“Will you be at the house this weekend?”

“Unless they fire me, yeah.”

“Will you bring wine?  We could talk.  Come, we’ll get drunk and talk about politics, as you do not prefer to get drunk and talk about _feelings_.”

“Did you guys just plain _not_ _have a saying about_ politics and religion at the dinner table…?”

“What, do you want to talk about God, too?  All right.  But, you know, it’s all of it the same thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There ya go, guys: all Camille, all the time.


	11. Evening

“Why do we watch this?”

“Because it’s an integral part of my childhood.  And because smoking is bad for you.”

“For God’s sake.”

“Come on, man.  Listen to Threepio.  He’s a good guy.”

“He is…”

“He’s a protocol droid.  Fluent in over six million forms of communication.”

“Why is the, the…waste basket.  Why is the waste basket smoking?”

“Because he thinks it’s very grown up. And he doesn’t realize that it’s dangerous.  It does dreadful things to your lungs, and it’s very bad for your heart.”

“…For _God’s sake_.  C’est le poison de la liberté, I see it now, my eyes are open.”

“Just shut up and watch.”

“You could ask politely, ‘By the way, Camille, I do not like the tobacco in the house.’”

“I’m going to have to start the video over again, now.”

“Or you could observe for yourself that I have not money to buy more.”

“Shush.”

“Speaking of des vices, you will go out and buy wine?  Marvelous, I knew you would—Maximilien, you pretend you are not hearing, but we will have wine later.  Maximilien ignores me.  Probably he thinks I have told your boss fascinating secrets about the ultra-important works of le Chevalier de Saint-Just—”

“Christ, Camille, drop it.”

“I was not ignoring you, Camille.  But I think I'll go to bed now. Good night, messieurs.”

-

He really doesn’t feel like sitting up late drinking.  And no: he hadn’t been ignoring Camille.  Camille and Metz had had their heads together over Metz’ computer.  They seem to be on excellent terms now.  It’s been a very long time since Robespierre cared to inquire too closely into Camille’s friendships.  Card-sharp cronies, dubious financiers, relics of the ancien regime brought in for dinner-party amusement.  Not that Metz is any of those things.  Of course.  He’s self-indulgent in quite a different style: riots of moderate domesticity.  Terrible for revolutions, but they aren’t having one of those; and in fact he likes Metz himself.  So there’s no reason to feel uneasy about a friendship there.  And yet—well, Robespierre doesn’t feel like sitting up late drinking, leave it at that.

At the knock on the door he caps his ballpoint pen.  It sounds like Camille, rather than Metz: yes, here he is, first hanging sullenly in the doorway and now crossing the floor and flinging himself down on the bed for lack of a free chair.  Robespierre takes a careful breath.  His chest has felt much too tight all day.  “I really wasn’t ignoring you, before.  I was just trying to finish the chapter I was reading.  I’m looking at Rousseau in translation.  It’s good practice in English, you know, since the material is so familiar—”

“Oh, _well,_ I didn’t realize I was intruding on a private evening with your precious Jean-Jacques.  You were operating on far too high a plane for my nonsense.”

“Did you come up here just to start a fight?”  Robespierre rubs his eyes under the glasses; when he looks up, Camille is also rubbing his face.  “No.  No, I didn’t, I think I came up here to apologize.  It didn’t come out right, did it?”

“Well—no.”

“No.”

They’ve been living together for several months, now.  It seems as though every two or three weeks they need to re-locate their friendship.  Until now Rousseau has been a safe topic.  He tries to think of another one, since Camille seems to have fallen silent, staring up at the ceiling.  For someone who has been working so hard this evening to pick a quarrel, he does make himself free with one’s furniture.

“What was Baltimore like?”

“Large.  Loud.  Humid.  There was a horrible great road there and I was living on the wrong side of it, in every sense.  I don’t speak the right language and frankly I’m not sure I was the right color, but when I tried to talk about that to Metz he turned pink and made little shushing movements with his fingers even though we were alone.  You know, I don’t think he even noticed he was doing it?”

“Hm.  Where did you stay?”

“A girl’s rooms.  No, not like that.  She wasn’t there.  She knows someone who knows someone, works for one of these computer journals in her spare time, she had an apartment free.  Chock full of novels.  And books about horrible accidents and murderers and dead bodies.  Actually, I’m not sure which ones were novels and which ones were histories?  As usual.  The style of writing is terrible these days.  Père Duchesne would be right at home.  Just imagine, in every city a hundred Héberts, tucked away in their rooms, hunched over their computers, studying a hypocritical crassness, without even the guise of revolutionary fervor.  God, _there’s_ someone I don’t miss.  —What are you writing, anyway?”

Ropespierre gives up all hope of a peaceful evening.  “A history.”

-

“Did you know he writes an history?”

“Um.  Robespierre?”

“Yes, Robespierre.  You said he want to have some, some quiet, away from politics.  How do you call an history ‘away from politics?’  It is almost the thing, the most political thing to write.  Even you know that.  It is mortally political.”

“Oh God, you really do want to stay up late drinking and talking about politics.”

"Alors, he write son histoire, one reads it, Danton will say ‘no, is not correct,’ I know I will be—je me fâcherai—”

“Hey.  Hey, okay.  Take a deep breath.  He’s doing what he needs to do.  It’s not about you.  And you can write too.  And, I don’t know, just…just take a deep breath.”

“Some of it is about me.  He can’t write about the Revolution without that.”

“No, I meant—never mind.  It’s just an expression.  I meant that he’s not writing because of you.  Did you ask him about it?”

“…No.  I went out.”

_“Welp.”_

“I did mean to ask his pardon for this evening.”

“Do it in the morning.  Look, I’m going to get something to eat with this wine because I’m still hungry, and you’re going to tell me all about your blog, and I’m not even going to try to tell myself I’m being professional.”

\--

"I detest Twitter."

"I bet you do."

"Pass me the bottle? --I detest Twitter, I will tell you why."

Metz lets the diatribe wash over him, nodding at suitable intervals. At some point, probably--probably--he should explain that he's thisclose to getting invited to leave the NEA. His boss had said to him, "Oh, Jon, when you didn't come to work on Thursday I thought maybe you had a job interview somewhere." That's not a promising thing for your boss to say, is it? I mean, when you haven't even mentioned that you've been brushing up your resumé? Oh, well. It can wait. Right now you have to hear all about what's wrong with Twitter. And, oh good, something really infuriating that someone said in a comment on YouTube. 

It's soothing. He's lying on the floor, and Camille is saying incredibly predictable things about the internet, and it's _ridiculously, selfishly, soothing_.


	12. Another 7 hours

**me:** Marat, is this working?

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** No. 

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** obviously not

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** how did you get on line

**me:** It’s Metz’ computer, he’s asleep.

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** and he let you near his computer?

**me:** I told you, he’s asleep. He left it out.

**me:** Oh.

**me:** You think I am acting as a spy for his agency.

**me:** lol

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** what

**me:** lol. That is what you say on line.  It means you are laughing. I am laughing at your suspicions: thus, lol.

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** are you drunk

**me:** insufficiently

**me:** but I am cheerful

**me:** look, I am not spying.  i wanted to let you know I can use this computer from time to time, probably.  And I wanted to ask why your London counterpart translated the Latin along with the French when he published my article.

**me:** and cut half of it

**me:** I thought the idea was to allow each of us his own journalistic voice.

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** first, you should ask him yourself

**me:** He didn’t answer my mail.  I sent it almost an hour ago.

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** when he’s awake. second, your classical references speak to an even smaller circle of the privileged class than they did two hundred years ago

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** third, did you not read his message about space limitations

**me:** No, where was it?

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** dated last tuesday

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** look, go to bed, Camille, it’s late

**amidupeuple2013 @ gmail.com:** good night

**me:** Why did you disconnect?

-

“I can hear you typing.”  He glances down at Metz, bleary and blinking on the carpet, and pats his hair briefly in place of answering.  The poor creature really can’t hold his drink.  It strikes him that there is something peaceful and familiar about writing, late, with someone else asleep in the room.  “Did I fall asleep?  I fell asleep.” 

“Oh, well, I was making speeches.  It was an honest response.”

Metz rubs his eyes.  “Tell me I didn’t leave the browser up, logged into everything?”

“Logged in…no.  No, no.  This is my own mail.”

“What time is it?”

“Not one o’clock, not yet.”

“Nnnngh.  I need to get to bed.  So do you. —What, it’s not that funny.”

-

Metz appears in the kitchen for breakfast at seven, as usual, and Robespierre is already there, as usual.  They’re out of oranges _and_ grapefruit. Robespierre watches Metz scratch his head over this state of affairs and smiles faintly.  “I had bread with jam.  Really, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?  We’ll get more.”  He yawns.  “Um.  I’m sorry.  Do you want anything else?  Like pancakes, or french toast—uh, pain perdu, that’s the word, right?  Or, uh, scrambled eggs?”  Robespierre repeats a polite refusal, and the other man drops down into one of the kitchen chairs and yawns again.  “Sorry.  Hey, uh.  If, uh, if Camille was giving you trouble about your writing, it’s not…I mean…”

He rather wonders what Metz _does_ mean.  It doesn’t seem readily apparent.  “I mean, don’t let him…discourage you?  I mean, _I_ think it’s a really good idea.  And he’s just, you know, he gets…”

“Yes.  I do know.”  When did Metz take on the job of apologizing for Camille?  Well, good luck to him.  “I was not discouraged.  I have anticipated difficulties.  Dr. Robineau recommends that I should write to people in the _French_ universities, that I might find, ah, help there, without the constraints of the government.  Communication through the computer would be faster than the post…”  Metz had been scratching his head again in a still-puzzled way; now he seems to catch Robespierre’s drift and nods.  Does he look, perhaps, a bit rueful?  Should Robespierre feel guilty about this hint of conspiracy?  No, he thinks not.  “And an introduction from someone who could give some—authenticity, is it in English?—to my identity…?”  Metz’ hair, by now, is standing up in tufts like the false ears of some owls.

“Right.  Right, I get your point.  Lemme think.  I mean…what I mean is, I’m happy to let you use the computer, set you up with an email account, I just…in terms of using my NEA position as a, a personal reference, that’s questionable in terms of professional ethics.  I’d need to talk to my boss.  And, um.  This isn’t…a good time to push things with her.”

Oh, dear.  Robespierre polishes his glasses, glancing at Metz’ face before putting them back on.  “I’m sorry.  I think I understand.”

-

As he washes the breakfast dishes, Metz wonders if he is, in fact, on the road to a life spent in his parents’ basement, smoking weed, listening to Camille Desmoulins complain about epic battles with Wikipedia editors.  It doesn’t sound so bad at the moment, but he’s old enough to recognize a temporary frame of mind. 


	13. 1/1/2015, 12:01 a.m.

Happy New Year!

We are all living in the future now, aren’t we?  (Yeah, yeah, I know, the clock ticking over from December 31 to January 1 doesn’t mean anything in the grand scale of Things That Mean Things, but…fuck, man, if you were born in the 1970s, 2015 sure sounds like The Future.)

We’re all living in the future now.  Some of the following statements may be wholly or partially true.

  * We are all living happily ever after.
  * Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, and I live in a fantastically cool Cambridge condo just minutes from Harvard Square, recently remodeled kitchen, fabulous original molding details, private walled garden, beautiful antique furniture, charming quiet neighbors, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 3 cats.
  * I left the Agency on good enough terms that I was able to get another job lined up before I quit.  I’m pulling in a fabulous six-figure salary, plumping up my retirement account, and networking left and right.  My career has really taken off.
  * Robespierre just loves returning to undergraduate study at UMass, with a library work-study job.  Shelving books and knocking off his required math-and-science credits fulfills his every hope while leaving him ample time to compose his History of the Revolution.
  * Camille contributes more than his fair share to the household both in income and in housework



….ahahaha okay never mind I can’t keep this up.  But anyway: we’re okay, living here in the future.  We’re okay.  I’m not in my parents’ basement smoking pot and listening to rants about Wikipedia editorial wars.  I’m not in my parents’ basement, anyway.  And I have a less-than-an-hour commute to my new (underpaid) museum job.  And…and what, really?  Robespierre is on Skype with French academics at strange hours of the day, and with Saint-Just at other strange hours of the day, and at essentially all the less-strange hours of the day he’s taking the NEA up on their connection with the university’s work-study program.  Being Robespierre isn’t enough of a credential to get him through life?  Fine, then, he’ll jump through the requisite academic hoops…again.  While watching how France and Danton handle one another.

And then there’s Camille, who in an astonishing feat of revolutionary acrobatics got fired from Marat’s blog, started another blog with the other Marat, reconciled with the first Marat blog after Saint-Just left to do (and I quote) “real things that are not internet flame wars,” and now has a book deal to write about visiting France again for the first time.  I said something about a reality show being his next logical step and then I had to explain for a few hours. There are still...so very many things that need explaining. Yesterday: footie pajamas. Two days before that: we aren't buying bettas from Petco because they would die because I don't know how to take care of fish and then I would be sad about fish dying, no I am not joking. Last week: actually Robespierre is right and we _should_ be buying fair trade coffee. 

Explanations and apologies, the latter mostly implicit. I'm sorry that this is all there is to my world. Footie pajamas and reality shows and trying not to buy quite so many things from companies that are evil.

I get letters from Marat, every once in a blue moon; I got an invitation to Danton’s wedding.  That’s going to be a trip and a half.  Camille’s presence is mandatory, and I guess mine is a trial run for the lavish summer writing tour.  If I can save up enough vacation time. 

Saint-Just was last seen in Québec. 

So…we are all living happily ever after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hugs* Thank you to all the readers who followed this! I'm taking a break for now, since I don't have very much new to say about these guys--but every end is left as loose as possible.


End file.
